A nice variety of beer eats were provided by five food vendors: pizza from Xian Bar, Japanese from Hagaki, sausages from Andy’s, falafel from Biteapita, and BBQ from Home Plate.

Finally got a chance to try Boxing Cat‘s brews, along with meeting brewmaster Michael Jordan (no, not the basketball legend). Their famed Right Hook Helles was quite impressive – yes, me and craft lagers again. Their Big Boy DIPA was no slouch either. Also interesting was their single-hop offering, which featured the Nuell Melon variety, one of the newer experimental hops from Germany.

Most breweries showcased their flagship brews plus one or two seasonals, with pumpkin beers from a handful of them. NBeer’s own Pumpkin Ale ( 秋日南瓜 ) differed from the rest because it’s a Chinese interpretation of the style, eschewing the usual pumpkin pie spices common to the American-inspired originals. No cloves, allspice, cinammon nor nutmeg were used. Instead, brewmaster Yinhai chose star anise, supplemented by ginger and coriander seed, for a more Asian sensibility. It seemed to pleasantly surprise a lot of festgoers, several of whom tired of the cloying character found in the more conventional spice mixture usually encountered in most attempts at the style.

Last serving of the Raspberry Beijinger Weisse 树莓小麦酸啤, on Day 2

When the Raspberry Beijinger Weisse kicked, the Pumpkin Ale had just encountered temporary technical difficulties, but eventually kicked later in the evening as well. Using a permanent marker made things a little confusing… Oops…

In that vein, I think NBeer provided one of the more experimental (and dare I say creative?) showings at the festival. The Raspberry Beijingerweisse (see what we did there?) was a big hit and was actually the first beer of ours to kick, contrary to what naysayers of sour beers might have expected. Another eyebrow-raiser was our Zhongnanhai Smoke Ale 中南海烟熏, a light amber-blonde brew that introduced many attendees to their first ever smoked beer. The only other commercial brewery doing anything as arguably experimental (in my humble, biased opinion) for the festival was Slow Boat, which brought their Maple Bacon Ale – a tasty number that I really enjoyed, but more hit-or-miss with a surprising number of others to whom I recommended giving it a try. Oh well, that’s how creativity works – not everyone can be a fan. At least not at first…